Silver is the 68th most abundant element in the earth's crust, and has been used in a variety of applications from currency to semiconductors. In particular, silver has been used as one of the precious metals such as gold and platinum from old times. The precious metals are metals having the lowest side effects to the skin of humans and animals when they are in contact. Among them, silver has been used in a wide variety of applications such as the treatment of skin diseases and medical services since silver is known to be a heavy metal that has antimicrobial activity and is not harmful to human beings.
In order to employ the antimicrobial activity of silver to kill a variety of harmful microorganisms, antimicrobial fibers, which were obtained by physically binding silver to cellulose, latex, polyethylene, polypropylene and the like, have been widely used in the medical field. In addition, silver-infused bandages have the ability to kill bacteria, fungi, protozoa and virus and thus protect wounds from them. Most of the silver-infused bandages such as silver dressing materials are associated with burn patients. For example, it was reported that, when a silver-infused bandage is applied to burn patients, the regeneration of the damaged skin is facilitated by various factors.
In addition, device-associated infections come with a heavy burden in clinical and economic terms. For example, it takes at least $2,836 per infection to manage catheter-associated bacteremia.
In recent years, silver is most commonly applied to a dressing material for treating a wound and a central venous catheter. An anesthetic (silver sulfadiazine and chlorhexidine) central venous catheter has the effect of reducing the bacterial infection, compared to the control catheters. In the field of medical services, another use of silver is preparing a silver protein that is used to treat conjunctivitis of eyes.
Silver is mainly used to prevent bacterial infection. It was shown that silver dressing materials for treating a wound may contribute meaningfully to the field of medical services. When silver is used as a dressing material for treating a wound, the results revealed that the silver is very harmful to fibroblast cells.
The most important, recently used silver compounds include silver sulfadiazine (AgSD), metallic silver, silver acetate, and silver protein. These silver compounds are used to prevent infection in burned skin and ocular diseases and to eradicate warts, but silver has problems associated with cytotoxicity. In recent years, a bandage is treated with silver nitrate to obtain a silver-infused bandage. However, this silver-infused bandage still has problems associated with cytotoxicity to skin cells and silver leaching.
On the grounds as described above, it is necessary to permanently infuse silver into cellulose. The present invention's technology of permanently fixing silver in the cellulose is useful to apply to cellulose fibers or cotton, and is required in a large number of applications including wood preservation, antibiotic bandages, water purification, and other possibilities.